How Do We Fight Back?

Bowie Cut-ups

The Path Appears As We Walk

Coming to the fore; knowledge and wisdom, health and wellness, and a grounded secure manifestation.

Official at times, can’t seem to shake it. Organizational life on neurodecolonization feels right. The path appears as we walk it, with the values locally enchanting our surroundings, ancestors guiding the work as we go. Seeking wisdom, connecting ultimate teamwork for the journey.

Rejuvinative vision, knowledge and wisdom, health and wellness, and grounded secure manifestation. With headway and adaptability around convergence, longterm rejuvenation brokers connection, vision in successful decolonization servitor, thoughtforms. Dreamt up in grand facilitating supportive systems manifesting connecting that ultimate teamwork, ultimate connection and health of natural all good growth.

Do Easy

Beautiful insight for younger folks

Do Easy took me years of trial and error

Animist magick that I didn’t even know I learned or should pass on

https://youtu.be/eoOUBETTyMI

The Western Lands

Bendito Machine

WRITING TO REMEMBER

Do you wish you could WRITE? Do you wish you had a better MEMORY? Do you want to make STORIES but are too confused about how to even start? THIS IS AN INTENSIVE WRITING CLASS! It is not a social situation at all! In fact, you can be completely anonymous in this class! You don’t have to be cool! Your clothes can be square! You don’t have to read aloud or talk to anyone if you don’t want to! You don’t even have to make eye contact! And YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A WRITER to be a part of it! THIS CLASS WORKS ESPECIALLY WELL FOR ‘NON-WRITERS’ like bartenders, janitors, office workers, hairdressers, musicians, and ANYONE who has given up on “being a writer” but still wonders what it might be like to write. OPEN to ALL people! Lynda teaches a specific way of working that she learned from her teacher, Marilyn Frasca, in the late 1970’s and has used ever since. She says it will work for anyone who has any kind of curiosity about writing or remembering — especially people who have always wanted to write, but have no idea how to even begin. It is not jive! It is FOR REAL! (It is also pretty fun too, but not necessarily in a social way!) Can you dig that? If so, we can dig YOU!

Magick Art and Shamanism

Gulf War for Oil – Gulf Oil Disaster

Gulf War for Oil

Gulf Oil Disaster

If only those responsible and those who support the destruction and crime committed in Iraq were more directly affected.

Ship of Fools or a Ferry Ride to the Depths of Hades?

Round the world and home again
That’s the sailor’s way
Faster faster, faster faster

There’s no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There’s no knowing where we’re rowing
Or which way the river’s flowing

Is it raining, is it snowing
Is a hurricane a-blowing

Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of Hell a-glowing
Is the grisly reaper mowing

Yes, the danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing
And they’re certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing

Lately I have been feeling like the world is  on such a wondrous boat ride as Willy Wonka and his Ship of Fools. I have to wonder what connections can be made to mythology, archetypes, Willy Wonka and our current experience at this point of time.

Greek mythology brings up Charon who ferrys people across to Hades. How might this connect with the Chocolate Factory? Wonka did ferry his boat to a deeper level, didn’t he? To where are they going?

To where is the ferry man taking us? I feel like our world is on a ferry ride to the depths of Hades, while the rowers keep on rowing with no sign of slowing, and no earthly way of knowing which direction we are going.

Where is the Candy Man to command this boat to stop?

Or are we deranged, frivolous, and oblivious, passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, ignorant of our own direction?

The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious, passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction. –http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_fools

In The Ship of Fools Bosch is imagining that the whole of mankind is voyaging through the seas of time on a ship, a small ship, that is representative of humanity. Sadly, every one of the representatives is a fool. This is how we live, says Bosch–we eat, dring, flirt, cheat, play silly games, pursue unattainable objectives. Meanwhile our ship drifts aimlessly and we never reach the harbour. The fools are not the irreligious, since promiment among them are a monk and a nun, but they are all those who live “in stupidity”. Bosch laughs, and it is sad laugh. Which one of us does not sail in the wretched discomfort of the ship of human folly? Eccentric and secret genius that he was, Bosch not only moved the heart but scandalized it into full awareness. The sinister and monstrous things that he brought forth are the hidden creatures of our inward self-love: he externalizes the ugliness within, and so his misshapen demons have an effect beyond curiosity. We feel a hateful kinship with them. The Ship of Fools is not about other people, it is about us. –http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bosch/fools/

I have to wonder how many mythic and archetypal analogies can be made to our present day situation. And since Willy Wonka inspired this ponderance, how many more ways can this and other scenes be seen. What does it mean in context of the movie and how can we draw upon them and apply them to our current affairs?

Aspiration

Aspiration is one of the five strengths that allow us to practice our
bodhisattva discipline of helping others throughout our whole life.
Because you have experienced joy and celebration in your practice, it
does not feel like a burden to you. Therefore, your aspire further and
further. You would like to attain enlightenment. You would like to free
yourself from neurosis. You would also like to serve all sentient beings
throughout all times, all situations, at any moment. You are willing to
become a rock or a bridge or a highway. You are willing to serve any
worthy cause that will help the rest of the world. It is also general
instruction on becoming a very pliable person, so that the rest of the
world can use you as a working basis for their enjoyment of sanity.

Condensed from pages 74 to 75 in /Training the Mind and Cultivating
Loving Kindness

Teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, taken from works published by
Shambhala Publications,  the Archive of his unpublished work in the
Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
TO SUBSCRIBE, unsubscribe, see the quotes online or read the Ocean of
Dharma blog, visit the website at http://oceanofdharma.com

The Cremation of Sam McGee

Snob on A Bus

I have never taken public transportation in my life. I have taken a train here and there, and a party bus….but never the METRO! I recently got rid of my car to “go green”, well, and because the lease was too expensive. So I have a beachcruiser … and the bus system. These are my life learnings (or woes, or wtf moments) from the Los Angeles Public Transportation. It is one hell of a ride!

http://snobonabus.blogspot.com/

article on the snob . . .

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bus-snob27-2010feb27,0,1062483,full.story

Do Not Watch This Video

Reaching into in

Esoteric Histories and Ancient Wisdom

Butthole Surfers – Interview in bed (part 1)

Butthole Surfers – Interview in bed (part 2)

Alan Moore on writing and magick

Klint Finley

via http://mutateweb.com/archives/2005/02/16/alan-moore-on-writing-and-magick/

New Alan Moore interview:

AM: I’ll give a brief recap in case we feel we missed anything. Magic and language are practically the same thing, they would at least have been regarded as such in our distant past. I think it is wisest and safest to treat them as if they are the same thing. This stuff that you are dealing with – words, language, writing – this is dangerous, it is magical, treat it as if it was radioactive. Don’t doubt that for a moment. As far as I know, the last figures I heard quoted, nine out of every ten writers will have mental problems at some point during their life. Sixty percent of that ninety percent – which I think works out at roughly fifty percent of all writers – will have their lives altered and affected – seriously affected – by those mental problems. I think what that translates to is – nine out of ten crack up, five out of ten go mad. It’s like, miners get black lung, writers go bonkers. This is a real occupational hazard. There’s plenty of ways to go bonkers, some of them a lot quieter, some more insidious than others – drink, heroin, there’s lots of other sorts of things – but this is dangerous – we’re dealing with the unreal. You’re dealing right on the borderline of fact and fiction, which is where our entire world happens. We’re living in a world of fact and we’ve got our heads full of fiction, the characters that we’ve invented for ourselves – we’re all writers, we all invent characters for ourselves, roles in this little play that we’re running in our head that we call our lives. With a writer, you’re dealing with the actual stuff of existence, you’re playing the God game. All the things that you will have to consider before you write a story are exactly the things God had to consider before he created the universe – plot, characters (laughter) and what’s it mean, what’s it about, what’s the theme here . . . motifs. A lot of them suns, they’ll do, we’ll put them everywhere – hey, snakes! These are easy . . . (laughter).

http://www.enginecomics.co.uk/interviews/jan05/alanmoore.htm

Write Magick

Manipulating the field of perception . . . Shamanic trance postures, sending the unstruck note via written word into your blood stream . . .  Scrying the dark side of the brain . . . coaxing whispers from the spaces between the emptiness neurons . . . Buddhism

Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Ray Bradbury. . .

“i think i was programed from birth to adore reading. With both of my grandmothers being librarians, there was never a lack of literature in my home. As I got older and began to develop my own personal appreciation of art, I found certain novels that pushed through me, and changed who I was as a person. Although I am always searching for a new bound copy of my dreams, it seems like I always go back to the same stories. These are the books that have changed who I am. These are the stories that diagram my life, these are the novels that i can recite every word from every page, the books that are like sex and drugs and raw emotion and life.”

Read this thread here . . . http://afropunk.ning.com/forum/topics/books-that-changed-your-life

Jack Kerouac’s Essentials of Spontaneous Prose

Via http://www.languageisavirus.com/

SET-UP
The object is set before the mind, either in reality. as in sketching (before a landscape or teacup or old face) or is set in the memory wherein it becomes the sketching from memory of a definite image-object.

PROCEDURE
Time being of the essence in the purity of speech, sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-words, blowing (as per jazz musician) on subject of image.

METHOD
No periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled by false colons and timid usually needless commas-but the vigorous space dash separating rhetorical breathing (as jazz musician drawing breath between outblown phrases)–“measured pauses which are the essentials of our speech”–“divisions of the sounds we hear”-“time and how to note it down.” (William Carlos Williams)

SCOPING
Not “selectivity’ of expression but following free deviation (association) of mind into limitless blow-on-subject seas of thought, swimming in sea of English with no discipline other than rhythms of rhetorical exhalation and expostulated statement, like a fist coming down on a table with each complete utterance, bang! (the space dash)-Blow as deep as you want-write as deeply, fish as far down as you want, satisfy yourself first, then reader cannot fail to receive telepathic shock and meaning-excitement by same laws operating in his own human mind.

LAG IN PROCEDURE
No pause to think of proper word but the infantile pileup of scatological buildup words till satisfaction is gained, which will turn out to be a great appending rhythm to a thought and be in accordance with Great Law of timing.

TIMING

Nothing is muddy that runs in time and to laws of time-Shakespearian stress of dramatic need to speak now in own unalterable way or forever hold tongue-no revisions (except obvious rational mistakes, such as names or calculated insertions in act of not writing but inserting).

CENTER OF INTEREST
Begin not from preconceived idea of what to say about image but from jewel center of interest in subject of image at moment of writing, and write outwards swimming in sea of language to peripheral release and exhaustion-Do not afterthink except for poetic or P. S. reasons. Never afterthink to “improve” or defray impressions, as, the best writing is always the most painful personal wrung-out tossed from cradle warm protective mind-tap from yourself the song of yourself, blow!-now!-your way is your only way-“good”-or “bad”-always honest (“ludi- crous”), spontaneous, “confessionals’ interesting, because not “crafted.” Craft is craft.

STRUCTURE OF WORK

Modern bizarre structures (science fiction, etc.) arise from language being dead, “different” themes give illusion of “new” life. Follow roughly outlines in outfanning movement over subject, as river rock, so mindflow over jewel-center need (run your mind over it, once) arriving at pivot, where what was dim-formed “beginning” becomes sharp-necessitating “ending” and language shortens in race to wire of time-race of work, following laws of Deep Form, to conclusion, last words, last trickle-Night is The End.

MENTAL STATE

If possible write “without consciousness” in semi-trance (as Yeats’ later “trance writing”) allowing subconscious to admit in own uninhibited interesting necessary and so “modern” language what conscious art would censor, and write excitedly, swiftly, with writing-or-typing-cramps, in accordance (as from center to periphery) with laws of orgasm, Reich’s “beclouding of consciousness.” Come from within, out-to relaxed and said.

Writing A Great Script Fast In A Nutshell

Follow along with this fast and easy step-by-step process for thinking up a great script or story idea! Learn how to brainstorm for film ideas that fit your skills, interest and production platforms. Take that new film idea and learn how to add a visual theme, plot points, character traits, twists, metaphors/symbols, conflict/obstacles, setups/payoffs, suspense, humor and much more! Based on the book “Developing Digital Short Films” (2004 Peachpit/Pearson) by Sherri Sheridan. This class is perfect for digital filmmakers or animators using DV, 2D and/or 3D. Download the Nutshell Workbook for this free online screenwriting class at http://www.MindsEyeMedia.com or http://www.MyFlik.com. You can also just use some paper or a notebook to follow along with the step-by-step process, but the Workbook has long lists of ideas for each step to help you think up new ideas fast. This 90 minute “Writing A Great Script Fast In A Nutshell” class is part of a 20 hour DVD workshop that takes you through a start to finish screenwriting process in about 20 hours. “Writing A Great Script Fast” the 20 hour DVD workshop is available at the above websites.

The Writer’s Journey and Mythic Structure with Christopher Vogler

Christopher Vogler, author of the international best-selling book THE WRITER’S JOURNEY explores the powerful relationship between mythology and storytelling for screenwriters, scholars, and fans of pop culture.

a zen fool’s notebook

an extended glimpse into the art and philosophy of a zen fool, poems in the creative stage, drawings, insightful quotes from past thoughtful minds . . .

Visit site for some excerpts http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fStoreID=1904618

If you live below the “poverty” level

If you live below the “poverty” level you are excused from supporting war tax as well as other ugly practices that any thinking, feeling human wants to avoid and bring to an end.

-Hermit

Can I get a Witness?

As I began my left hand turn

a specter called out

I heard veiled warnings

beware of the blood

beware of the movement

life comes from flow

energy moving and growing

beware of the mistakes of the past

beseech the ancestors to guide your path

The specter calls out

causing a disturbance

creating self reflective spirals

warnings that match the silent voice

further and further

EXPLORING OUR CONFUSION

—–Leonard Jacobs

In our own lives, we feel a sense of confusion — it seems to be confusion — but that confusion brings out something that is worth exploring. The questions that we ask in the midst of our confusion are potent questions, questions that we really have. We ask: “Who am I? What am I? What is this? What is life?” and so forth. Then we explore further and ask: “In fact, who on earth asked that question? Who is that person who asked the question ‘Who am I?’ Who is the person who asked, “What is? or even “What is what is?” We go on and on with this questioning further and further inward. In some way, this is nontheistic spirituality in its fullest sense. External inspirations do not stimulate us to model ourselves on further external situations. Rather, the external situations that exist speak to us of our confusion, and this makes us think more, think further.

>From “Padmasambhava & Spiritual Materialism,” in CRAZY WISDOM, pages five to six.

My kind of reading group

http://www.realitysandwich.com/chapter_1_simplicissimus

Has anyone here read or heard about this book? Looks pretty good.

Decentralized networks, smart mobs, collective intelligence, open source software, biopolitics, the emergent social Web and the integration of love percolate the New Edge, yet how do we use all these sexy, geeky, quasi-spiritual concepts to deconstruct the global empire of control and build a movement in response?

Writing Down the Dreams

Looking back on my dream diary, I begin to see a pretty clear message emerging. What is more, there are some real great materials emerging as well. Rich imagery, archetypes, strange story lines. . .

 

Don’t count on receiving credit for your good deeds or good practice.

Last posting of Lojong “writing prompt” email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

It is kind of a relief to get to the end of these writing prompts that I decided to post here. My original intention was for them to intersperse my own writing entries, feeding my writing as needed. Having gotten very busy they became the large portion of my entries, drowning out anything I may have written.

Now over I will have to get to writing, busy or not.

Don’t Expect Applause

Don’t expect others to praise you or raise toasts to you. Don’t count on receiving credit for your good deeds or good practice.

This is the last proverb by your selected author. If you want to continue to receive proverbs by mail, go to

http://lojongmindtraining.com/createemailagent.aspx

and set up your email again.

“Yes, it’s nice, but it has a stain on it.”

cluster posting of Lojong “writing prompt” email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Don’t Be Frivolous

Don’t demonstrate frivolous jealousy at your friends’ success. If an acquaintance is wearing a new tie or a new blouse that you yourself would like, don’t capriciously point out its shortcomings to him or her. “Yes, it’s nice, but it has a stain on it.” That will only serve to irritate him and won’t help either his or your practice.

Don’t Be Jealous

If someone else receives praise and you don’t, don’t be envious.

Don’t Wallow in Self-pity

Don’t feel sorry for yourself. If somebody else achieves success or inherits a million dollars, don’t waste time feeling bad because it wasn’t you.

Liberate Yourself by Examining and Analyzing

Simply look at your mind and analyze it. By doing these two things, you should be liberated from kleshas and ego-clinging. Then you can practice lojong.

Don’t Vacillate

You should not vacillate in your enthusiasm for practice. If you sometimes practice and sometimes do not, that will not give birth to certainty in the dharma. Therefore, don’t think too much. Just concentrate one-pointedly on mind training.

Train Wholeheartedly

Trust yourself and your practice wholeheartedly. Train purely in lojong – singlemindedly, with no distractions.

Don’t Misinterpret

There are six things that you may twist or misinterpret in your practice: patience, yearning, excitement, compassion, priorities, and joy.

• It is a misinterpretation of patience to be patient about everything in your life but the practice of dharma.
• Misinterpreted yearning is to foster yearning for pleasure and wealth but not to encourage the yearning to practice dharma thoroughly and properly.
• Misinterpreted excitement is to get excited by wealth and entertainment, but not to be excited by the study of dharma.
• It is twisted compassion to be compassionate to those who endure hardships in order to practice dharma, but to be unconcerned and uncompassionate to those who do evil.
• Twisted priorities means to work diligently out of self-interest at that which benefits you in the world, but not to practice dharma.
• Twisted joy is to be happy when sorrow afflicts your enemies, but not to rejoice in virtue and in the joy of transcending samsara.

You should absolutely and completely stop all six of these misinterpretations. This Time, Practice the Main Points

“This time” refers to this lifetime. You have wasted many lives in the past, and in the future you may not have the opportunity to practice. But now, as a human being who has heard the dharma, you do. So without wasting any more time, you should practice the main points.

This teaching is threefold:

[1] the benefit of others is more important than yourself;

[2] practicing the teachings of the guru is more important than analytical study;

[3] practicing Bodhicitta is more important than any other practice.

Don’t Be Swayed by External Circumstances

Although your external circumstances may vary, your practice should not be dependent on that. Whether you are sick or well, rich or poor, have a good reputation or a bad reputation, you should practice lojong. It is very simple: if your situation is right, breathe that out; if your situation is wrong, breathe that in.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Always meditate on that which is most difficult

Another cluster posting of Lojong “writing prompt” email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Always Meditate on Whatever Provokes Resentment

Always meditate on that which is most difficult. If you do not start right away, the moment a difficulty arises, it is very hard to overcome it.

Train Without Bias in All Areas. it is Crucial to do This Pervasively and Wholeheartedly

The practice of lojong includes everyone and everything. It is important to be thorough and impartial in your practice, excluding nothing at all that comes up in your experience.

Keep the Three Inseparable

Your practice of lojong should be wholehearted and complete. In body, speech, and mind, you should be inseparable from lojong.

Pay Heed That the Three Never Wane

The first thing you should not let wane is devotion to your spiritual friend [kalyanamitra]. Your mental attitude of admiration, dedication, and gratefulness toward the spiritual friend should not diminish. The second thing you should not let wane is a delightful attitude toward lojong, or the taming of the mind. Your appreciation for receiving such teachings as lojong or mind training should not diminish. And the third thing you should not let wane is your conduct – the hinayana and Mahayana vows you have taken.

Take on the Three Principal Causes

The first cause is having a good teacher. The second cause is applying your mind and basic demeanor to the dharma. The third cause is having food and housing so that it is possible for you to practice the dharma. You should try to maintain those three situations and take delight that you have such opportunities.

Train in the Three Difficulties

When neurosis arises, you first have to recognize it as neurosis. Then you have to apply a technique or antidote to overcome it. Since neurosis basically comes from selfishness, from placing too much importance on yourself, the antidote is that you have to cut through the ego. Finally, you have to have the determination not to follow the neurosis or continue to be attracted to it. There is a sense of abruptly overcoming neurosis.

Observe These Two, Even at the Risk of Your Life

You should maintain the disciplines you have committed yourself to: in particular, [1] the refuge vow and [2] the Bodhisattva vow. You should maintain the general attitude of being a decent Buddhist and, beyond that, the special discipline of lojong, or mind training.

Whichever of the Two Occurs, Be Patient

Whether a joyful or a painful situation occurs, whatever happens to you, your practice is not swayed by it, but you maintain continual practice and continual patience.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

always take the attitude of being of benefit to all sentient beings

 Clump posting of Lojong “writing prompt” email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Two Activities: One at the Beginning, One at the End

The point of this slogan is to begin and end each day with twofold Bodhicitta. In the morning you should remember Bodhicitta and take the attitude of not separating yourself from it, and at the end of the day, you should examine what you have done. If you have not separated yourself from twofold Bodhicitta, you should be delighted and vow to take the same attitude again the next day. And if you were separated from Bodhicitta, you should vow to reconnect with it the next day.

When you get up in the morning, as soon as you get up, to start off your day you promise yourself that you will work on twofold Bodhicitta and develop a sense of gentleness toward yourself and others. You promise not to blame the world and other sentient beings and to take their pain on yourself. When you go to bed, you do the same thing. In that way both your sleep and the day that follows are influenced by that commitment.

Correct All Wrongs With One Intention

When you are in the midst of perverse circumstances such as intense sickness, a bad reputation, court cases, increase of kleshas, or resistance to practice, you should develop compassion for all sentient beings who also suffer like this, and you should aspire to take on their suffering yourself through the practice of lojong.
..
To correct all wrongs means to stamp on the kleshas. Whenever you don’t want to practice – stamp on that, and then practice. Whenever any bad circumstance comes up that might put you off- stamp on it. In this slogan you are deliberately, immediately, and very abruptly suppressing the kleshas.

All Activities Should Be Done With One Intention

The one intention is to have a sense of gentleness toward others and a willingness to be helpful to others – always. That seems to be the essence of the Bodhisattva vow. In whatever you do – sitting, walking, eating, drinking, even sleeping – you should always take the attitude of being of benefit to all sentient beings.

Don’t Seek Others’ Pain as the Limbs of Your Happiness

This slogan is quite straightforward: you hope that somebody else will suffer so you can benefit from it.
..
Although it may benefit us if someone else experiences misfortune, we should not wish for that and dream about what we could get out of such a situation.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Am I like an iceberg?

Grandpa Freud . . . so many strange ideas. Captured the imagination of our out of control, western world.

The conscious, preconscious and the unconscious. Where do these all go as I write? Where do these all go when I sleep or when I can’t sleep, because my tooth feels like someone is smashing it with pliers?

Am I like an iceberg?

I have been thousands of icebergs, which causes my uncontrollable laughter.

blame Gods and Demons for slogans

Clump posting of Lojong “writing prompt” email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Don’t Make Gods Into Demons

This slogan refers to our general tendency to dwell on pain and go through life with constant complaints. We should not make painful that which is inherently joyful.

At his point, you may have achieved a certain level of taming yourself. You may have developed the tonglen practice of exchanging yourself for others and feel that your achievement is real. But at the same time, you are so arrogant about the whole thing that your achievement begins to become an evil intention, because you think you can show off. In that way, dharma becomes adharma, or nondharma.

Don’t act With a Twist

Acting with a twist means that since you think you are going to get the best in any case, you might as well volunteer for the worst. That is very sneaky.
..
For instance, in order to gain good results for yourself, you may temporarily take the blame for something. Or you may practice lojong very hard in order to get something out of it, or with the idea of protecting yourself from sickness. The practice of this slogan is to drop that attitude of looking for personal benefits from practice – either as an immediate or a long-term result.

Don’t try to Be the Fastest

When practitioners begin to develop their understanding of the teaching of the dharma and their appreciation of the dharma, they sometimes fall into a sort of racehorse approach. Such practitioners are concerned with who can do their prostrations faster, who can sit better, who can eat better, who can do this and that better.

But is our practice is regarded purely as a race, we have a problem. The whole thing has become a game rather than an actual practice, and there is no seed of benevolence and gentleness in the practitioner. So you should not use your practice as a way to get ahead of your fellow students.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Meditations on the Tarot

Brother Void

What comes to your mind when you think of Tarot?

How do the cards themselves make you feel?

Have you ever held a deck? Do you own one?

What do you know about the history of Tarot?

What do the images mean?

Who created this deck and its symbols?

When you look at the symbols on each card what do they mean to you, regardless of their “official” meaning?

The Major Arcana seem to tell a story or/and a process. They appear to represent multicultural archetypes. What story do they tell when shuffled and randomly chosen? What do they tell when read in order? The cards are numbered and numerologicaly connected to Hebrew letters (cabala). Why is The Fool number 0?

The Fool

0

Aleph

Why is The Fool number 0?

I leave you with this quote:

… consciousness succumbs all too easily to unconscious influences, and these are often truer and wiser than our conscious thinking … Personality need not Imply consciousness. It can just as easily be dormant or sleeping.

(C. G. Jung, Conscious, Unconscious and Individuation)

 

Stay tuned for continued foolish ruminations on the Tarot with Brother Void.

Drawings and images feed the writing process

ut of the flesh of our mothers come dreams and memories of the Gods. Of other kind than the normal inducement of interest and increasing skill, there exists a continual pressure upon the artist of which he is sometimes partially conscious but rarely entirely aware. he learns early or late in his career that power of literal reproduction (such as that of the photographic apparatus) is not more than slightly useful to him. He is compelled to find out from his artist predecessors the existence, in representation of real form, of supersessions of immediate accuracies; he discovers within himself a selective conscience and he is satisfied, normally, in large measure by the extensive field afforded by this broadened and simplified consciousness. Yet beyond this is a region and that a much greater one, for exploration. The objective understanding, as we see, has to be attacked by the artist and a subconscious method, for correction of conscious visual accuracy, must be used. No amount of visual skill and consciousness of error will produce a good drawing. A recent book on drawing by a well-known painter is a case in point; there the examples of masters of draughtsmanship may be compared with the painter-author’s own, side by side, and the futility of mere skill and interest examined. Therefore to proceed further, it is neccesary to dispose of the “subject” in art also (that is to say the subject in the illustrative or complex sense). Thus to clear the mind of inessentials permits through a clear and transparent medium, without prepossessions of any kind, the most definite and simple forms and ideas to attain expression.

Notes on Automatic Drawing

An “automatic” scribble of twisting and interlacing lines permits the germ of an idea in the subconscious mind to express, or at least suggest itself to the consciousness. From this mass of procreative shapes, full of fallacy, a feeble embryo of idea may be selected and trained by the artist to full growth and power. By these means, may the profoundest depths of memory be drawn upon and the springs of instinct tapped.

Yet, let it not be thought that a person not an artist may by these means not become one: but those artists who are hampered in expression, who feel limited by the hard conventions of the day and wish for freedom but have not attained to it, these may find in it a power and a liberty elsewhere undiscoverable. thus writes Leonardo da Vinci:-“Among other things, I shall not scruple to discover a new method of assisting the invention; which though trifling in appearance, may yet be of considerable service in opening the mind and putting it upon the scent of new thoughts, and it is this: if you look at some old wall covered with dirt, or the odd appearance of some streaked stones, you may discover several things like landskips (sic), battles, clouds, uncommon attitude, draperies, etc. Out of this confused mass of objects the mind will be furnished with abundance of designs and subjects, perfectly new.”

From another, a mystical writer, “Renounce thine own will that the law of God may be within thee.”

The curious expression of character given by handwriting is due to the automatic or subconscious nature that it acquires by habit. So Automatic drawing, one of the simplest of psychic phenomena, is a means of characteristic expression, and if used with courage and honesty, of recording supconscious activities in the mind. The mental mechanisms used are those common in dreams, which create quick perception of relations in the unexpected, as wit, and psycho-neurotic symptoms. Hence it appears that single or non-consciousness is an essential condition and as in all inspiration the product of involution not invention.

Automatism being the manifestation of latent desires (or wishes) the significance of the forms (the ideas) obtained represent the previously unrecorded obsessions.

Art becomes, by this illuminism or ecstatic power, a functional activity expressing in a symbolical language the desire towards joy unmodified-the sense of the Mother of all things-not of experience.

This means of vital expression releases the fundamental static truths which are repressed by education and customary habit and lie dormant in the mind. It is the means of becoming courageously individual; it implies spontaneity and disperses the cause of unrest and ennui.

The dangers of this form of expression come from prejudice and personal bias of such nature as fixed intellectual conviction or personal religion (intolerance). These produce ideas of threat, displeasure or fear, and become obsessions.

In the ecstatic condition of revelation from the subconscious, the mind elevates the sexual or inherited powers (this has no reference to moral theory or practise) and depresses the intellectual qualities. So a new atavistic responsibility is attained by daring to believe-to possess one’s own beliefs-without attempting to rationalize spurious ideas from prejudiced and tainted intellectual sources.

Automatic drawings can be obtained by such methods as concentrating on a *Sigil-by any means of exhausting mind and body pleasantly in order to obtain a condition of non-consciousness-by wishing in opposition to the real desire after acquiring an organic impulse towards drawing.
The Hand must be trained to work freely and without control, by practise in making simple forms with a continuous involved line without afterthought, i.e. its intention should just escape consciousness.

Drawings should be made by allowing the hand to run freely with the least possible deliberation. In time shapes will be found to evolve, suggesting conceptions, forms and ultimately having personal or individual style.

the mind in a state of oblivion, without desire towards reflection or pursuit of materialistic intellectual suggestions, is in a condition to produce successful drawings of one’s personal ideas, symbolic in meaning and wisdom.

By this means sensation may be visualized.

first published in FORM MAGAZINE Vol. 1 No. 1, April 1916

thank you to http://www.hermetic.com/spare/auto_drawing.html for this particular version

passing the buck

Lojong “writing prompt” email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Don’t Transfer the Ox’s Load to the Cow

The ox is capable of carrying burdens; the cow is less capable of carrying burdens. So the point of this slogan is that you do not transfer your heavy load to someone who is weaker than you. Transferring the ox’s load to the cow means not wanting to deal with anything on your own. You don’t want to take the responsibilities; you just pass them on to your secretary or your friends or anybody you can just order about. In English this is called “passing the buck”. Doing that is a bad idea, since we are supposed to be cutting down chaos and creating less traffic in the samsaric world altogether. We are supposed to be cutting down on administrative problems and trying to sort things out. We could invite other people to be our helpers, but we cannot pass the buck to them. So don’t transfer the ox’s load to the cow.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

This slogan also means not to humiliate people. .

Lojong writing prompt email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Don’t Bring Things to a Painful Point

Don’t blame your sense of dissatisfaction, pain, and misery on somebody else, and do not try to lay your power trips on others. Whatever power you have – domestic power, literary power, or political power – don’t impose it on somebody else.

This slogan also means not to humiliate people. .

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Don’t Be so Predictable

Clump posting of Lojong writing prompt email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Don’t Wait in Ambush

The Tibetan version of this slogan literally says “Don’t ambush”, that is, wait for somebody to fall down so you can attack. You are waiting for that person to fall into the trap or problem you want or expect. You want them to have that misfortune, and you hope that misfortune will take place in a way which will allow you to attack.

If you are having a disagreement with somebody, you don’t usually attack him or her right away because you don’t want to be in a powerless position. Instead, you wait for him to fall apart, and then you attack him. Sometimes you pretend to be his adviser, and you attack him in that disguise, pointing out to him how wretched he is. You say ” I have been waiting to tell you this. Now you are falling apart completely, I am going to take the opportunity to tell you that you are not so good. I am in much better shape than you are.” That is a sort of opportunism, a bandit’s approach. That bandit’s approach is the meaning of waiting in ambush, which happens quite frequently.

Don’t Malign Others

You would like to put people in the wrong by saying disparaging things. However pleasantly coated with sugar and ice cream, underneath you are trying to put people down, trying to get revenge… You think that your virtues can only show because other people’s are lessened, because they are less virtuous than you are.
..
I think that slogan is very straightforward.

Don’t Be so Predictable

That is to say, an ordinary person or man of the world would have some understanding about his relationship with his enemies and his friends and how much debt he owes people. It is all very predictable. Similarly, when someone inflicts pain on you, you keep that for long-term storage, long-term discussion, long-term resentment. You would eventually like to strike back at him, not forgetting his insult in ten or even in twenty years.

This slogan has an interesting twist. To begin with, we could use the analogy of the trustworthy friend. Some people are trustworthy people, traditional people, maybe you could say old-fashioned people. When you become friends with people like that, they always remember your friendship, and the trust between you lasts for a long time. In the example of the trustworthy person, you SHOULD always remember your connection with him or her and his or her connection with you. But if somebody gives you a bad deal, or if you have a lot of conflict with somebody, you should not constantly hold a grudge against him. In this case, the point is that you should NOT always remember somebody’s bad dealings with you.

When somebody is about to inflict pain on us, we usually wait until they actually strike us and are unkind to us… Then we have made an enemy of somebody. That is not the proper approach. The proper approach is to make friends immediately rather than waiting for something to strike.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

practice of egolessness just another way of building up your ego

Todays Lojong writing prompt email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Abandon Poisonous Food

If the practice of egolessness begins to become just another way of building up your ego – building your ego by giving up your ego – it is like eating poisonous food; it will not take effect. In fact, rather than providing an eternally awakened state of mind, it will provide you with death, because you are holding on to the ego. So if your reason for sitting or doing post-meditation practice is self-improvement, it is like eating poisonous food. “If I sit properly, with the greatest discipline and exertion, then I will become the best meditator of all” – this is a poisonous attitude.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

you want to subjugate the world in your own particular style, however subtle of sneaky it may be

 Lojong writing prompts email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Abandon any Hope of Fruition

This slogan means that you should give up any possibilities of becoming the greatest person in the world by means of your training. In particular, you may quite impatiently expect that because of lojong practice you will become a better person. You may be hoping that you will be invited to more little clubs and gatherings by your proteges or friends, who are impressed with you. The point is that you have to give up any such possibility; otherwise, you could become an egomaniac. In other words, it is too early for you to collect disciples.

Working with the slogans does not mean looking for temporary revelation or trying to achieve something by doing smart little things that have managed to quell people’s problems in the past. You may have become a great speaker… or a great psychologist who has managed to conquer other people’s neuroses or a great literary figure who has written several books… Such things are somewhat based on relating with reality… But you want to subjugate the world in your own particular style, however subtle of sneaky it may be.

By doing the same kind of trick, you hope to attain enlightenment. You have tuned in to a professional approach and become a professional achiever. So there is the possibility that you might approach practice in the same way, thinking that you can actually con the Buddha mind within yourself and sneakily attain enlightenment,

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

You do not just want to work with chicken shit

Lojong writing prompts email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Work With the Greatest Defilements First

You should work with whatever is your greatest obstacle first – whether it is aggression, passion, pride, arrogance, jealousy, or what have you. You should not just say “I will sit more first, and I will deal with that later.” Working with the greatest defilements means working with the highlights of your experience or your problems. You do not just want to work with chicken shit, you want to work with the chicken itself.

Don’t Ponder Others

One of the problems that we have generally is that when somebody does something to us or violates our principles, we keep picking on that particular thing… For instance, because you have labored through your tonglen practice and have worked so hard, you develop tremendous arrogance. You feel as though you have gone through so much and that your effort makes you a worthy person. So when you meet somebody who has not accomplished what you have, you would like to put them down. This slogan is very simple: don’t do that.

Don’t Talk About Injured Limbs

Because of your arrogance and your aggression, you prefer to talk about other peoples’ defects as a way of building yourself up. The point of this slogan is NOT taking delight in somebody else’s defects or injured limbs.
..
This is not a puritanical approach to reality, but simply realizing that if a person has problems in dealing with his or her life, we do not have to exaggerate that by making remarks about it. We could simply go along with that person’s problems.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Change Your Attitude, but Remain Natural

Lojong writing prompts email reminder from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Change Your Attitude, but Remain Natural

Generally, our attitude is that we always want to protect our own territory first. We want to preserve our own ground – others come afterward. The point of this slogan is to change that attitude around, so that we reflect on others first and on ourselves later… You also try to get away with things. For instance, you don’t wash the dishes, hoping that somebody else will do it. Changing your attitude means reversing your attitude altogether – instead of making someone else do something, you do it yourself.

Then the slogan says ‘remain natural’ which has the sense of relaxation. It means taming your basic being, taming your mind altogether so that you are not constantly pushing other people around. Instead, you take the opportunity to blame yourself… Instead of cherishing yourself, you cherish others – and then you just relax. That’s it. It’s very simple-minded.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

refraining from outrageous action

Todays Lojong writing prompts email reminder from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Always Abide by the Three Basic Principles

The three basic principles are also described as [1] keeping the two vows, [2] refraining from outrageous action, and [3] developing patience.

The first is keeping the promises you made when you took the refuge and Bodhisattva vows, keeping them completely. This one is quite straightforward.

Number two is refraining from outrageous action. When you begin to practice lojong, you realize that you shouldn’t have any consideration for yourself; therefore, you try to act in a self-sacrificing manner. But often your attempt to manifest selflessness becomes exhibitionism. You let yourself be thrown in jail or crucified on the cross… Many of our American friends have done such things. However, that approach should be regarded as pure exhibitionism rather than as the accomplishment of Bodhisattva action.

Number three is developing patience. Usually, there is extreme confusion about patience. That is to say, you can be patient with your friends but not with your enemies; you can be patient with people whom you are trying to cultivate or your particular proteges, but you cannot be patient with people who are outside of your protege-ism. That kind of extreme is actually a form of personality cult, the cult of yourself, which is not such a good idea. In fact, it has been said that it is absolutely NOT a good idea.

..

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

re: http://edublogs.org/

As I said in an earlier  post concerning my setting up a blog at edublogs, I set one up a couple days ago. I was very happy with the options and extras and environment over there. Then I go an email apologizing for a longer than expected down time and for resetting my password and changing my user name.

I can sort of understand the password, but not the user name. For some reason that disturbed me and I have never heard of such a thing. I have a friend who runs an online community and who could easily give a member any name they want. I don’t get why my sign in info has to be changed.

At any rate, I will not be using that blog at http://edublogs.org/

I’m just saying.

Lojong email reminder clump prompts

 Another email reminder clump from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

If You can Practice Even When Distracted, You are Well Trained

The idea of this slogan is the realization that whenever situations of an ordinary nature or extraordinary nature come up – our pot boiled over, or our steak is turned to charcoal, or suddenly we slip and lose our grasp – a sudden memory of awareness should take place. Jamgon Kongtrul‘s commentary talks about a well-trained, powerful horse who loses his balance and suddenly regains it again through losing it. It is similar, I suppose, to skiing, where you use the force that goes down and let yourself slide through the snow – suddenly you gain attention and develop balance out of that.

So whenever there is a sudden glimpse or sudden surprise of losing one’s grip – that seeming fear of losing one’s reality can be included properly. To do so there is a need for renunciation. It is not your chauvinistic trip, that you are a fantastically powerful and strong person and also have a sense of mindfulness taking place all the time. But when something hits you, which is the result of unmindfulness, then suddenly that unmindfulness creates a reminder automatically. So you get back on track, so to speak, able to handle your life.

Always Maintain Only a Joyful Mind

It is like taking a holiday trip: you are very inspired to wake up in the morning because you are expecting to have a tremendous experience. Exertion is like the minute before you wake up on a holiday trip: you have some sense of trusting that you are going to have a good time, but at the same time you have to put your effort into it.

The point of this slogan is continuously to maintain joyful satisfaction. That means that every mishap is good, because it is encouragement for you to practice dharma. Other people’s mishaps are good also: you should share them and bring them into yourself as the continuity of their practice or discipline. So you should include that also. It is very nice to feel that way, actually.

To start with, you maintain a sense of cheerfulness because you are on the path; you are actually doing something about yourself.
..
In some sense the whole thing is ridiculously trippy. But if somebody doesn’t begin to provide some kind of harmony, we will not be able to develop sanity in this world at all. Somebody has to plant the seed so that sanity can happen on this earth.

Of the Two Witnesses, Hold the Principal One

In any situation there are two witnesses: other people’s view of you and your own view of yourself. Of those, the principal witness is your own insight. You should not go along with other people’s opinion of you. The practice of this slogan is always be true to yourself.
..
You know best about yourself, so you should work with yourself constantly. This is based on trusting your intelligence rather than trusting yourself, which could be very selfish. It is trusting your intelligence by knowing who you are and what you are. You know yourself so well, therefore any deception could be cut through. If someone congratulates or compliments you, they may not know your entire existence. So you should come back to your own judgment, to your own sense of your expression and the tricks you play on others and on yourself. This is not self-centered, it is self-inspired from the point of view of the nonexistence of the ego. You just witness what you are. You are simply witnessing and evaluating the merit, rather than going back over it in a Jungian or Freudian way.

All Dharma Agrees at One Point

We could say that all teachings are basically a way of subjugating or shredding our ego. And depending on how much the lesson of the subjugation of the ego is taking hold in us, that much reality is being presented to us. All dharmas that have been taught are connected with that. There is no other dharma, particularly in the teachings of Buddha.
..
That is why this slogan goes along with another saying of the Kadampa teachers, which is “The shedding of the ego is the scale that measures the practitioner.” If you have more ego, you will be heavier on that scale: if you have less ego, you will be lighter. That is the measure of how much meditation and awareness have developed, and how much mindlessness has been overcome. 

Practice the Five Strengths, the Condensed Heart Instructions. the Mahayana Instruction for Ejection of Consciousness at Death is the Five Strengths; How You Conduct Yourself is Important

…This slogan tells us that it is important for us to realize that death is an important part of our practice, since we are all going to die and since we all going to relate with death anyway…the instruction for how to die in mahanaya is the five strengths.

STRONG DETERMINATION, number one, is connected with taking a very strong stand: “I will maintain my basic egolessness, my basic sanity, even in my death.”

FAMILIARIZATION is developing a general sense of mindfulness and awareness so that you do not panic when you are dying.

The SEED OF VIRTUE is connected with not resting, not taking any kind of break from your fear of death. It also has to do with overcoming your attachment to your belongings.

REPROACH means realizing that this so-called ego does not actually exist. Therefore, you can say “What am I afraid of, anyway? Go away, ego.”
..
And the last one, ASPIRATION, is realizing that you have tremendous strength and desire to continue and to open yourself up. Therefore, you have nothing to regret when you die. You have already accomplished everything that you can accomplish.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

edublogs.org

If things slow down here it is because I am experimenting with new blogs at http://edublogs.org/

The address is http://virus.edublogs.org/ 

http://edublogs.org/ has some interesting services, features and plans, check out what they have going on.

Whatever You Meet Unexpectedly, Join With Meditation

Todays email reminder from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Whatever You Meet Unexpectedly, Join With Meditation

The idea is that whatever comes up is not a sudden threat or an encouragement or any of that bullshit. Instead it simply goes along with one’s discipline, one’s awareness of compassion. If somebody hits you in the face, that’s fine…

Generally speaking, Western audiences have a problem with that kind of thing. It sounds love-and-lighty, like the hippie ethic in which “Everything is going to be okay. Everybody is everybody’s property, everything is everybody’s property. You can share everything with everybody. Don’t lay ego trips on things.” But this is something more than that… It is simply to be open and precise, and to know your territory at the same time. You are going to relate with your own neurosis rather than expanding that neurosis to others.

In a sense, when you begin to settle down to that kind of practice, to that level of being decent and good, you begin to feel very comfortable and relaxed in your world. It actually takes away your anxiety altogether, because you don’t have to pretend at all… There is so much accommodation taking place in you. And out of that comes a kind of power: what you say makes sense to others. The whole thing works so wonderfully. It does not have to become martyrdom. It works very beautifully.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

a fine smoky tea

Another pot of tea arrives, as they continue the discussion. Seven pots of tea so far, working on number eight.

ah . . . it is a fine smoky tea.

“So what is it exactly that is getting to you? I hear all the stories you are telling me, but I sense that you aren’t telling me the real, underlining issue, the one thing that is wearing at you so heavily. What is the story that you are avoiding?”

“Well . . . I’m not so sure, I mean . . . what is the real, true nature of this place anyway? What in the hell is it that I am supposed to be doing here? I just don’t get it, it all feels so disjointed and hollow.”

Lojong Writing Prompts

Todays email reminder from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Seeing Confusion as the Four Kayas is Unsurpassable Shunyata Protection

The reason that the four kayas become a great protection is that we begin to realize the way our mind functions, our state of being. We realize that whatever comes up in our mind is always subject to that flow, that particular case history, that nature. Sudden pain, sudden anger, sudden aggression, sudden passion – whatever might arise always follows the same procedure, so to speak, the same process

[This] is the best protection because it cuts through the solidity of your beliefs… All of those schemes and thoughts and ideas are empty! If you look behind their backs it is like looking at a mask… if you look behind it, it doesn’t look like a face anymore, it is just junk with holes in it. You realize that you are … not any of your big ideas. That is the best protection for cutting confusion.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Be Grateful to Everyone

email reminder from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Be Grateful to Everyone

So in a sense all the things taking place around us, all the irritations and all the problems, are crucial. Without others we cannot attain enlightenment – in fact, we cannot even tread on the path. In other words, we could say that if there is no noise outside during our sitting meditation, we cannot develop mindfulness… If everything were lovey-dovey and jellyfishlike, there would be nothing to work with.

We can write our own case history and employ our own lawyers to prove that we are right and somebody else is wrong – but that is also trouble we have to go through. And trying to prove our case history somehow doesn’t work. In any case, hiring a lawyer to attain enlightenment is not done. It is not possible. Buddha did not have a lawyer himself.

Without others, we would have no chance at all to develop beyond ego. So the idea here is to feel grateful that others are presenting us with tremendous obstacles -even threats and challenges. The point is to appreciate that. Without them, we could not follow the path at all.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Ask and it will be given to you

Matthew 7:7
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

So I asked, “in what ways might language be a virus from outer space?”

The first answer to begin unveiling this interconnection arrives via http://www.futurehi.net/archives/000060.html 

Is Humanity Being Hacked?

Sometimes when I am in deep meditation I get the strong feeling of a higher intelligence speaking through me, through human culture, as if we are being hacked, used, programmed by something else. As Mark Pesce has said,

We don’t use memes, they use us.

For example I have entertained/experienced the possiblity that we are already being hacked by the machines we created. The Matrix allegory speaks clearly here, except I’m not so sure that its a bad thing. And of course we hack the machines – a symbiosis. But more curious is that this advancing technology was started by human minds, many of which could have been hacked by something else. By what or by who is the question. It’s no secret that many of the pioneers of the PC revolution were psychedelic explorers, and Terrence Mckenna has gone so far as to postulate that human language itself is an alien artifact planted in us by psychedelic mushrooms. I think it would be arrogant of us to dismiss this lightly and without further investigation.

The Mushroom Speaks from Terrence Mckenna:

“I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty times older than your history. Though I have been on earth for ages I am from the stars. My home is no one planet, for many worlds scattered through the shining disc of the galaxy have conditions which allow my spores an opportunity for life. The mushroom which you see is the part of my body given to sex thrills and sun bathing, my true body is a fine network of fibers growing through the soil. These networks may cover acres and may have far more connections than the number in a human brain. My mycelial network is nearly immortal, only the sudden toxification of a planet or the explosion of its parent star can wipe me out. By means impossible to explain because of certain misconceptions in your model of reality all my mycelial networks in the galaxy are in hyperlight communication across space and time. The mycelial body is as fragile as a spider’s web but the collective hypermind and memory is a vast historical archive of the career of evolving intelligence on many worlds in our spiral star swarm. Space, you see, is a vast ocean to those hardy life forms that have the ability to reproduce from spores, for spores are covered with the hardest organic substance known. Across the aeons of time and space drift many spore-forming life-forms in suspended animation for millions of years until contact is made with a suitable environment. Few such species are minded, only myself and my recently evolved near relatives have achieved the hyper-communication mode and memory capacity that makes us leading members in the community of galactic intelligence. How the hypercommunication mode operates is a secret which will not be lightly given to man. But the means should be obvious: it is the occurrence of psilocybin and psilocin in the biosynthetic pathways of my living body that opens for me and my symbiots the vision screens to many worlds. You as an individual and man as a species are on the brink of the formation of a symbiotic relationship with my genetic material that will eventually carry humanity and earth into the galactic mainstream of the higher civilizations.

Since it is not easy for you to recognize other varieties of intelligence around you, your most advanced theories of politics and society have advanced only as far as the notion of collectivism. But beyond the cohesion of the members of a species into a single social organism there lie richer and even more baroque evolutionary possibilities. Symbiosis is one of these. Symbiosis is a relation of mutual dependence and positive benefits for both of the species involved. Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyperlight drive ships and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns younger and more stable than your own. To secure an eternal existence down the long river of cosmic time I again and again offer this agreement to higher beings and thereby have spread throughout the galaxy over the long millennia. A mycelial network has no organs to move the world, no hands; but higher animals with manipulative abilities can become partners with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return both themselves and their humble mushroom teacher to the million worlds all citizens of our starswarm are heir to.”

Dancing the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

I wish that I didn’t have to be an ancient, reincarnated, bristle cone, grandfather, guru. I get tired of already knowing everyone and everything. Sometimes I can forget and everything is new and unknown, it’s a different kind of magick when all things are new and unknown. This time I was fortunate enough to cover my memories and remembrances with a thick, heavy blanket of snow, helping to chill the past cycles.

The problem with the forgetting devices that I lay ahead of time is that I remember. This is such a tactile dimension! So many senses to engage with remembrance. Sometimes to forget for a while I wrap myself up in heavy blankets, curl up into a ball and stare off into space or just fall asleep, slipping into a dark, barren and cold winter.

I am from the winter, and my blood line has an interesting mixture of northern and southern tribes, the truly magickal opposites. An alchemy of north and south, fire and ice. Most people think that it’s east and west. Thats just a lateral distraction, deceitful diversions crafted by our “keepers.”

They are our keepers because we let them. We allow it on so many levels. I keep coming back to make sure they don’t get too far out of line.

Where are my robes? Where is my hearth? What are we doing this for? Everything has gotten so detached and disjointed. It is almost not worth returning to anymore. I will keep my word though. We have a long way to go yet.

Too bad we will have to go through so much pain and suffering before its all done. I always wonder why we have to be so thick headed, why does it take so much repetition and circles before we get the idea.

When will all the dreams and symbols become clear, as we gaze proudly and even arrogantly at the past cultures and civilizations, many of which are still living and crying out to us to wake up and see? A dead, sleeping people see everything as dead, lifeless artifacts. Do you remember when we danced around the fire for days? Running through the forest screaming and yelling the songs of our land, dancing with the elk?

We used to swim out beyond the reef together, diving deeper and deeper to see who could hold their breath the longest and to see who could translate into the deeper realms first, anxious to visit with our ancestors and all our brothers and sisters from the inner realms.

It is kind of lonely to have to wait so long and to have to keep repeating ourselves. You ask for teachings and knowledge, we tell you straight out, giving you what you need, but you don’t understand it.

I am going to go wrap myself in a blanket for a while and dream the sun to rise. Maybe we will cross paths again tomorrow.

email reminder clump

Todays email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/ are actually a compilation of several days. I have been away from the computer for a few days and my email has piled up. I considered to stop posting these, but the act of posting these has actually prodded me to at least think about writing more regularly. While away from cyberspace I actually have begun to write more. Now just to get it onto this blog.

Anyway here are the reminders . . .

~*~

Drive All Blames Into One

A lot of people seem to get through this world and actually make quite a comfortable life by being compassionate and open – even seemingly compassionate and open. Yet although we share the same world, we ourselves get hit constantly… For instance, we could be sharing a room with a college mate, eating the same problematic food, sharing the same shitty house, having the same schedule and the same teachers. Our roommate manages to handle everything OK and find his or her freedom. We, on the other hand, are stuck with that memory and filled with resentment all the time. We would like to be revolutionary, to blow up the world. We could say the schoolteacher did it, that everybody hates us and they did it. But WHY do they hate us? That is a very interesting point.
..
Everything is based on our own uptightness. We could blame the organization; we could blame the government; we could blame the food; we could blame the highways; we could blame out own motorcars, out own clothes; we could blame an infinite variety of things. But it is we who are not letting go, not developing enough warmth and sympathy – which makes us problematic. So we cannot blame anybody…This slogan applies whenever we complain about anything, even that our coffee is cold or our bathroom is dirty. It goes very far. Everything is due to our own uptightness, so to speak, which is known as ego holding, ego fixation. Since we are so uptight about ourselves, that makes us very vulnerable at the same time… We get hit, but nobody means to hit us – we are actually inviting the bullets.
..
The text says “drive all blames into one”. the reason you have to do that is because you have been cherishing yourself so much… Although sometimes you might say that you don’t like yourself, even then in your heart of hearts you know that you like yourself so much that you’re willing to throw everybody else down the drain, down the gutter. You are really willing to do that. You are really willing to let somebody else sacrifice his life, give himself away for you. And who are you, anyway?

~*~

When the World is Filled With Evil, Transform All Mishaps Into the Path of Bodhi
You might feel inadequate because you have a sick father and a crazy mother and you have to take care of them, or because you have a distorted life and money problems… A lot of these situations could be regarded as expressions of your own timidity and cowardice. They could all be regarded as expression of your poverty mentality.
..
You should also begin to build up confidence and joy in your own richness… Even if you are abandoned in the middle of the desert and you want a pillow, you can find a piece of rock with moss on it that is quite comfortable to put your head on.

We have found that a lot of people complain that they are involved in intense domestic situations; they relate with everything in their lives purely on the level of pennies, tiny stitches, drops of water, grains of rice. But we do not have to do that – we can expand our vision by means of generosity. We can give something to others. We don’t always have to receive something first in order to give something away… The nature of generosity is to be free from desire, free from attachment, able to let go of anything.

~*~

Begin the Sequence of Sending and Taking With Yourself

So whenever anything happens, the first thing is to take on the pain yourself. Afterward, you give away anything which is left beyond that, anything pleasurable… so you do not hold on to any possible way of entertaining yourself or giving yourself good treatment.
..
So the whole approach here is to open your territory completely, to let go of everything. If you suddenly discover that a hundred hippies want to camp in your living room, let them do so! But then those hippies also have to practice.

The basic idea of the practice is actually very joyful. It is wonderful that human beings can do such a fantastic exchange and that they are willing to invite such undesirable situations into their world. It is wonderful that they are willing to let go of even their smallest corners of secrecy and privacy, so that their holding on to anything is gone completely. That is very brave. We could certainly say that this is the world of the warrior, from the Bodhisattva‘s point of view.

~*~

In All Activities, Train With Slogans
We have been using this technique all the time, throughout our practice. Particularly in Dharmic environments, whenever we have a wall we post the slogans in order to remind ourselves of them.

The point is to catch the first thought… The idea is that in catching the first thought, that first thought should have some words.

In this case, whenever you feel that quality of me-ness, whenever you feel “I” – and maybe “am” as well – then you should think of these two sayings:

[1] May I receive all evils; may my virtues go to others.

[2] Profit and victory to others; loss and defeat to myself.
..
It takes quite a lot of effort because it is a big job. That is why it is called the Mahayana [big vehicle], it is a big deal. You cannot fall asleep when you are driving on this big highway…

~*~

Three Objects, Three Poisons, and Three Seeds of Virtue
Relating to passion, aggression, and ignorance in the main practice of tonglen is very intense, but the main practice is somewhat lighter
..
Whatever aggression our enemy has provided for us – let that aggression be ours and let the enemy thereby be free from any kind of aggression. Whatever passion has been created by our friends, let us take that neurosis into ourselves and let our friends be freed from passion. And the indifference of those who are in the middle or unconcerned, those who are ignorant, deluded, or noncaring, let us bring that neurosis into ourselves, and let those people be free of ignorance.
..
The purpose of that is that when you begin to hold the three poisons as yours, when you possess them fully and completely, when you take charge of them fully, you will find, interestingly enough, that the logic is reversed. If you have no object of aggression, you cannot hold your own aggression purely by yourself. If you have no object of passion, you cannot hold your passion yourself. And in the same way, you cannot hold on to your ignorance either.

By holding the poison, you let go of the object, or the intent, of your poison… if your anger is not directed TOWARD something, the object of aggression falls apart.

Odyssean Inferno

by D. M.

Grasping the pen in need of something, anything to pull you up and make sense out of life’s struggles, some reason to go on and some place to go on to. Tennyson turned to poetry at an early age, due to an unhappy home life. His writing skills enable him to cope well with the dark moments of life. Tennyson’s choosing the mythic hero Ulysses as the speaker of his poem “Ulysses” is key to its interpretation and help in carrying him through the pain and loss of his close friend.

Andrew McCulloch points out that, “From early childhood, poetry was intensely important to Tennyson as a refuge from his extremely unhappy home life” (McCulloch). This refuge in poetry was sought as Tennyson drafted “Ulysses” while “waiting for an Italian ship with its dark freight to bring Hallam’s body home to England. Images of dark seas, doomed vessels and death pervade the text (Martin 185-186). The same year that Arthur died, 1833, Tennyson’s brother Edward was admitted to a mental asylum. “In 1839, Alfred and Emily were officially engaged. By 1840, they were officially unengaged. Emily’s father had put a stop to the match, supposedly because Alfred was too poor to marry” (MacLeod).

The real reason for the separation is more likely that Tennyson’s opium addict brother Charles drove Emily’s sister to her eventual collapse, strongly affecting feelings toward Alfred Tennyson (MacLeod). Tennyson opposed opium use to the point of commenting on it in his poem “Lotos-Eaters,” but his “gypsy look, long hair, watery wide eyes–along with his artistic temperament, habitual pipe smoking, and trance-like imagery, all lent themselves to his unwelcome characterization as a possible drug user” (Platizky) After their separation, Tennyson threw himself into traveling and studying, becoming proficient in several languages (MacLeod).The earliest surviving complete stanza that exists from Tennyson’s youth was written when he was around the age of eight,

Whateer I see, whereer I move
These whispers rise & fall away;
Something of pain, of loss, of love,
But what, twere hard to say (Martin 22),

This piece already indicates that at a very young age, a profound connection with his emotions has already been established, already acquainted with pain and loss and love. “The emotional crisis of Hallam’s death along with other unfortunate life circumstances encouraged and allowed Tennyson to find a public place and voice for what had, until then, been an essentially personal art” (McCulloch).

Writing about ones emotions, illness and traumas has a beneficial effect on ones health (Positive Psychology Center). Writer and therapist Kate Evans MA, BSc reports, “the rhythms of poetry stimulate the part of the brain which governs emotion. Being forced to put these emotions down on paper brings about a kind of order and control” (Evans). To illustrate an example from “Ulysses,”

Tennyson loved to create sonorous, high-sounding verse, particularly by setting different vowel sounds closely against each other. The style is often intensely slow moving and languorous, and parts of the poem need to be read in a slow or chanting voice: “The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep / Moans round with many voices” (University of Buckingham).

Another poetic device Tennyson uses is the taking on of someone of a different time and who is older in years. He could be “assuming the voice of old men to stress a weary sadness” (qtd. in Davis). Taking on the voice of this ancient hero could act as a bridge to Ulysses’ wisdom, strength and experience. Tennyson may be setting up a relation ship or situation in the poem that is analogous to one that he is experiencing and that he wants to see from a different point of view, identifying his events with the events that are going on in Ulysses’ life. Perhaps this exercise can give him distance, strength and insight into his life situation.
Evans speaks of the benefit of the publishing step of writing, while supporting the previous point,

To move from therapeutic to truly publishable writing, however, can be a big step. The art of adapting for a market, editing and re-working is a difficult one to learn especially when it feels like the words have been squeezed from your soul. It can be a valuable experience. Taking another person’s point of view, for instance, can be a way of getting another perspective on what is going on in your life (Evans).

A poet of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s stature, who has won high titles by his writing, Poet Laureate and baron, is surely well skilled in the publishing step of writing and aware of any benefits that the publishing stage has to offer. The publication of a poem that gives honor and respect to a Homeric hero is in keeping with the traditions of the aristocratic warrior society that Ulysses was a part of and that Tennyson perhaps feels a part of with his circle of friends, A. H. Hallam having been one of them.

Dante’s Inferno Canto 26 was a source that Tennyson used for Ulysses as well as Homers Iliad and Odyssey. Dante, being Roman offers a less than flattering image of Ulysses, but Tennyson takes much from Dante’s account and gives Ulysses a more positive spin. Ulysses is in Dante’s inferno for a number of reasons, his insatiable desire for knowledge and seeking for new and unknown things and places are a few. The Romans had a less than flattering view of Ulysses the “dreadful” as he was the trickster who thought up the device which led to their defeat at Troy (Rosenberg).

In Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses represents strength, experience, leadership (lines 13-15), coming to terms with old age and his abilities, self-awareness (49-53), recognition of his skills and role in society (1-6, 33-43). He has synthesized experience into wisdom and knowledge and thirsts for more (18, 31-32), he desires to go on with life without pause and to be useful (1-5, 22-23,30-32), and he represents the epic quest of life to the point of chasing his own death (57-70). The above all are traits that can be drawn from Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”

Anne Hudson Jones notes that, “most people choose the archetypal myths of battle, journey, and death and rebirth in writing their pathographies” (Jones). A pathography is an accounting of ones illness, a somewhat new genre that is catching on and becoming very popular. The University of Buckingham observes that Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses,”

has been a favourite of explorers and mountaineers, and other people who have pushed themselves to extremes. Ulysses has fought his way through the ten years’ Trojan war, and experienced huge adventures on the way to his island home of Ithaca (University of Buckingham)

One element of the poem that seems to have been overlooked in its possible translations is when Ulysses addresses his mariners. Which mariners is he addressing? It seems from the poem, that he is addressing the companions who battled with him at Troy and accompanied him on his journey home. According to Homer, these mariners all died on their way home. Why would he be speaking to dead mariners? Does Ulysses represent Arthur already dead, on his last voyage west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules (44-70)?
“The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world” (55-57).
Whose voices do the deep moan round with? Are the drowned mariners calling out to Ulysses? Might Arthur be calling his friends to seek a newer world? There are eerie images of night sea journeys into the unknown, “Beyond the utmost bound of human thought,” suggested through out this poem (Rowlson).

What did Tennyson say the poem is about? Asking the author would be the simplest way to gain insight into a poem,

“It was partly his attempt to come to grips with grief, to speak about the need to keep going with the struggle of life. As he said himself: ‘The poem was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death, and it gave my feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life.” (University of Buckingham)

The number of interpretations that this short poem has illustrates the great thing about poetry. “A poem may simply be running through ideas or emotions, expressing multiple viewpoints at once, never coming to any particular conclusions. Poetry doesn’t have to mean anything, it can be an exercise in creativity, a coping tool or something that someone just does” (Davis).

Tennyson’s was not an easy life and he likely worked through a lot of his troubles through writing. His choosing of Ulysses was key and relevant to his coping at time in his life. His life circumstances at the time of composing the poem are key to the understanding of why he wrote it.

Bibliography

Adams, Kathleen. “A Brief History of Journal Therapy.” The Center for Journal Therapy. 2006. The Center for Journal Therapy.
11 Nov. 2007 <http://journaltherapy.com/rosen.htm&gt;

Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. New York: Doubleday, 2000.

Allingham, Philip V. “Discussion Questions for Alfred Lord
Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ (written, 1833; published, 1842).” Victorian Web. 10 Nov. 2007 <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ tennyson/ulyssesq.html>

Davis, Glyn. “Ulysses and the temptation of idleness: thinking about politics through poetry.” Australian Journal of Political Science 33.n1 (March 1998): 73(12). General OneFile. Gale. Santa Fe Community College. 10 Nov. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/ start.do?prodId=IPS>

Evans, Kate. “Express yourself.” Community Care (Feb 12, 2004): 28. General OneFile. Gale. Santa Fe Community College.
11 Nov. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS&gt;

The History Channel Presents – Troy: Unearthing the Legend, Volume 2. DVD. Compilation 2004. A&E Television Networks, 2004.

Harris, Kurt. “Mourning at the Mother’s Breast: on Death and Weaning in Tennyson’s In Memoriam.” PsyArt: A Hyperlink Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts. article 051120. 10 Nov. 2007 <http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2006_harris01.shtml&gt;

Hughes, Linda K. “Tennyson.” Victorian Poetry 43.3 (Fall 2005): 389(9). General OneFile. Gale. Santa Fe Community College. 10 Nov. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/ start.do?prodId=IPS>

Jones, Anne Hudson. “Writing and healing.” The Lancet 368.9554 (Dec 23, 2006): S3(2). General OneFile. Gale. Santa Fe Community College. 11 Nov. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/ start.do?prodId=IPS>

Kurshan, Ilana. “SparkNote on Tennyson’s Poetry ‘Analysis and
Themes.’” Spark Notes.10 Nov. 2007
< http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/tennyson/
analysis.html >

Kurshan, Ilana. “SparkNote on Tennyson’s Poetry ‘Crossing the
Bar.’” Spark Notes.10 Nov. 2007 <http://www.sparknotes.com/ poetry/tennyson/section10.rhtml>

Kurshan, Ilana. “SparkNote on Tennyson’s Poetry ‘The Lotos-Eaters.’” Spark Notes. 10 Nov. 2007 <http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/ tennyson/section3.rhtml>

Levi, Peter. Tennyson. London: Macmillan London Limited, 1993.

Literary Arts.” NoHo Arts District.” NoHo Communications Group, Inc. 11 Nov. 2007 <http://www.nohoartsdistrict.com/literary_arts/ how_to_writing_therapy.htm>

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University. 11 Nov. 2007 <http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/ English_Literature/19th_c/Dramatic_Monologue.html>

MacLeod, Kevin. “Alfred, ‘Eccentric’ Lord Tennyson.” Incompetech. 10 Nov. 2007 <http://incompetech.com/authors/tennyson/&gt;

Martin, Robert. Tennyson; The Unquiet Heart. London: Faber& Faber Ltd in conjunction with Oxford University Press,
1983.

McCulloch, Andrew. “Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’: Andrew McCulloch considers an ambiguous hero.” The English Review 16.2 (Nov. 2005): 17(4). General OneFile. Gale. Santa Fe Community College. 10 Nov. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/ start.do?prodId=IPS>

Platizky, Roger S. “‘Like dull narcotics, numbing pain’: Speculations on Tennyson and Opium.” Victorian Poetry 40, no. 2
(2002): 209-215. Libraries Worldwide: 1103, View Full Text in PDF format (WilsonSelectPlus) 11 Nov. 2007 <http://FirstSearch.oclc.org&gt;

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Rosenberg, Donna. World Mythology. Chicago: National Textbook
Company, 1992.

Rouse, W.H.D. The Odyssey. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd., 1937.

Shapiro, Johanna. “Can poetry be data? Potential relationships between poetry and research.” Families, Systems & Health 22.2 (Summer 2004): 171(7). General OneFile. Gale. Santa Fe Community College. 11 Nov. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/ start.do?prodId=IPS>

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Woolston, Chris. “Writing for therapy helps erase effects of trauma.” CNN.com. March 16, 2000. Cable News Network. 11 Nov. 2007 <http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/03/16/
health.writing.wmd/>.

Lists of feelings and needs

I have been contemplating and studying a couple of lists from a web site on Nonviolent Communication. I am finding that in studying communication, language, psychology and group work, I am coming across some great material that can also be used for writing, character development and the like.

Here are a couple lists . . .

feelings when your needs are satisfied

AFFECTIONATE compassionate friendly loving open hearted sympathetic tender warmCONFIDENT empowered open proud safe secureENGAGED absorbed alert curious engrossed enchanted entranced fascinated interested intrigued involved spellbound stimulatedINSPIRED amazed awed wonder

EXCITED amazed animated ardent aroused astonished dazzled eager energetic enthusiastic giddy invigorated lively passionate surprised vibrantEXHILARATED blissful ecstatic elated enthralled exuberant radiant rapturous thrilledGRATEFUL appreciative moved thankful touchedHOPEFUL expectant encouraged optimistic

JOYFUL amused delighted glad happy jubilant pleased tickledPEACEFUL calm clear headed comfortable centered content equanimous fulfilled mellow quiet relaxed relieved satisfied serene still tranquil trustingREFRESHED enlivened rejuvenated renewed rested restored revived

feelings when your needs are not satisfied

from: http://cnvc.org/feelings.htm

AFRAID apprehensive dread foreboding frightened mistrustful panicked petrified scared suspicious terrified wary worriedANNOYED aggravated dismayed disgruntled displeased exasperated frustrated impatient irritated irkedANGRY enraged furious incensed indignant irate livid outraged resentfulAVERSION animosity appalled contempt disgusted dislike hate horrified hostile repulsed CONFUSED ambivalent baffled bewildered dazed hesitant lost mystified perplexed puzzled torn

DISCONNECTED alienated aloof apathetic bored cold detached distant distracted indifferent numb removed uninterested withdrawnDISQUIET agitated alarmed discombobulated disconcerted disturbed perturbed rattled restless shocked startled surprised troubled turbulent turmoil uncomfortable uneasy unnerved unsettled upsetEMBARRASSED ashamed chagrined flustered guilty mortified self-consciousFATIGUE beat burnt out depleted exhausted lethargic listless sleepy tired weary worn out

PAIN agony anguished bereaved devastated grief heartbroken hurt lonely miserable regretful remorsefulSAD depressed dejected despair despondent disappointed discouraged disheartened forlorn gloomy heavy hearted hopeless melancholy unhappy wretchedTENSE anxious cranky distressed distraught edgy fidgety frazzled irritable jittery nervous overwhelmed restless stressed outVULNERABLE fragile guarded helpless insecure leery reserved sensitive shaky YEARNING envious jealous longing nostalgic pining wistful

needs inventory

from: http://cnvc.org/needs.htm

CONNECTION acceptance affection appreciation belonging cooperation communication closeness community companionship compassion consideration consistency empathy inclusion intimacy love mutuality nurturing respect/self-respect safety security stability support to know and be known to see and be seen to understand and be understood trust warmth

HONESTY authenticity integrity presencePLAY joy humorPEACE beauty communion ease equality harmony inspiration orderPHYSICAL WELL-BEING air food movement/exercise rest/sleep sexual expression safety shelter touch water

MEANING awareness celebration of life challenge clarity competence consciousness contribution creativity discovery efficacy effectiveness growth hope learning mourning participation purpose self-expression stimulation to matter understandingAUTONOMY choice freedom independence space spontaneity

Sending and Taking Should Be Practiced Alternately.

Todays email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Sending and Taking Should Be Practiced Alternately. These Two Should Ride the Breath

Sending and taking is a very important practice of the Boddhisattva path. It is called tonglen in Tibetan: ‘tong’ means ‘sending out’ or ‘letting go’ and ‘len’ means ‘receiving’ or ‘accepting’. ‘Tonglen’ is a very important term; you should remember it. It is the main practice in the development of relative Bodhicitta.
..
The practice of tonglen is actually quite straightforward ; it is an actual sitting meditation practice. You give away your happiness, your pleasure, anything that feels good. All of that goes out with the outbreath. As you breathe in, you breathe in any resentments and problems, anything that feels bad. The whole point is to remove territoriality altogether.

The practice of tonglen is very simple. We do not first have to sort out our doctrinal definitions of goodness and evil. We simply breathe out any old good and breathe in any old bad. At first we may seem to be relating primarily to our IDEAS of good and bad. But as we go on, it becomes more real.

Sometimes we feel terrible that we are breathing in poison which might kill us and at the same time breathing out whatever little goodness we have. It seems to be completely impractical,. But once we begin to break through, we realize that we have even more goodness and we also have more things to breathe in. So the whole process becomes somewhat balanced…But tonglen should not be used as any kind of antidote. You do not do it and then wait for the effect – you just do it and drop it. It doesn’t matter whether it works or not: if it works, you breathe that out; if it does not work, you breathe that in. So you do not possess anything. That is the point.

Usually you would like to hold on to your goodness. you would like to make a fence around yourself and put everything bad outside it: foreigners, your neighbors, or what have you. You don’t want them to come in. You don’t even want your neighbors to walk their dogs on your property because they might make a mess on your lawn. So in ordinary samsaric life. you don’t send and receive at all. You try as much as possible to guard those pleasant little situations you have created for yourself. You try to put them in a vacuum, like fruit in a tin, completely purified and clean. You try to hold on to as much as you can, and anything outside of your territory is regarded as altogether problematic. You don’t want to catch the local influenza or the local diarrhea attack that is going around. You are constantly trying to ward off as much as you can.

..The Mahayana path is trying to show us that we don’t have to secure ourselves. We can afford to extend out a little bit – quite a bit… if you develop the attitude of being willing to part with your precious things, to give away your precious things to others, that can help begin to create a good reality.

How do we actually practice tonglen? First we think about our parents, or our friends, or anybody who has sacrificed his or her life for our benefit. In many cases, we have never even said thank you to them. It is very important to think about that, not in order to develop guilt but just to realize how mean we have been. We always say “I want”, and they did so much for us, without any complaint… If we do not have that, then we are somewhat in trouble, we begin to hate the world – but there is also a measure for that, which is to breathe in our hatred and resentment of the world. If we do not have good parents, a good mother, or a good person who reflected such a kind attitude toward us to think about, then we can think of ourselves.

..

Just relate to the technique: the discursiveness of it doesn’t matter. when you are out, you are out; when you come in, you are in. When you are hot, you are hot; when you are cool, you are cool… Make it very literal and simple. We don’t want to make this into a revolutionary sort of imagery, mind-oriented social work approach or psychological approach. Let’s do it properly.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

In Postmeditation, Be a Child of Illusion

Todays email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

In Postmeditation, Be a Child of Illusion

Illusion does not mean haziness, confusion, or mirage. Being a child of illusion means that you continue what you have experienced in your sitting practice [resting in the nature of alaya] into postmeditation experience.

You realize that after sitting practice, you do not have to solidify phenomena. Instead, you can continue your practice and develop some kind of ongoing awareness. If things become heavy and solid, you flash mindfulness and awareness into them. In that way you begin to see that everything is pliable and workable. Your attitude is that the phenomenal world is not evil, that ‘they’ are not out to get you or kill you. Everything is workable and soothing.
..
It’s a very strong phrase, ‘child of illusion’. Think of it. Try to be one. You have plenty of opportunities.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Rest in the Nature of Alaya, the Essence

 Todays email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Rest in the Nature of Alaya, the Essence

The first six types of consciousness are the sensory perceptions: …eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind consciousness. The seventh type of consciousness, nuisance mind, is a kind of conglomeration called nyon-yi.

The idea of resting one’s mind in the basic alaya is to free oneself from that sevenfold mind and rest in simplicity and in clear and nondiscrimination mind. You begin to feel that sight, smell, sound, and everything else is just a production of home ground, or headquarters. you recognize them and then come back to headquarters, where those productions begin to manifest. You just rest in the needlessness of those productions.

The whole logic to process is based on taking it for granted that you trust yourself already, to begin with. You have some kind of relaxation with yourself. This is the idea of ultimate Bodhicitta. You don’t have to run away from yourself all the time in order to get something outside. you can just come home and relax. The idea is to return to home-sweet-home.

Self-liberate Even the Antidote

 Todays email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Self-liberate Even the Antidote

The antidote is the realization that our discursive thoughts have no origin… But we need to go beyond that antidote. We should not hang on the so-what-ness of it, the naivete of it.

The idea of the antidote is that everything is empty, so you have nothing to care about…whether anything great or small comes up, nothing really matters very much… so let it go… you can murder, you can meditate, you can perform art, you can do all kinds of things – everything is meditation, whatever you do. But there is something very tricky about the whole approach. That dwelling on emptiness is a misinterpretation, called the ‘poison of shunyata‘.

Some people say that they do not have to sit and meditate, because they have always ‘understood.’ But that is very tricky. I have been trying very hard to fight such people. I never trust them at all – unless they actually sit and practice. You cannot split hairs by saying that you might be… driving your Porsche and meditating away; you might be washing dishes (which is more legitimate in some sense) and meditating away. That may be a genuine way of doing things, but it still feels very suspicious.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Author Unknown

The following post was pilloried  from http://dailylight.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/reading-70-from-divine-remembrance/

I am including here because it fits in perfectly with the tonglen and lojong postings and is yet more great material that may prod me to writing.

Enjoy!

Heavenly Father, Help us
remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the
pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can’t make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us, Lord, that the scary
looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old
couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.

Heavenly Father, remind us each
day that, of all the gifts you give us, the greatest gift is love. It is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear. Open our hearts not just to those who are close to us, but to all humanity. Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.

– Author Unknown

Examine the Nature of Unborn Awareness

 Todays email reminders from http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Look at your basic mind, just simple awareness which is not divided into sections, the thinking process that exists within you. Just look at that, see that.

The reason our mind is known as UNBORN awareness is that we have no idea of its history. We have no idea where this mind, our crazy mind, began in the beginning. It has no shape, no color, no particular portrait or characteristics. It usually flickers on and off, off and on, all the time. Sometimes it is hibernating, sometimes it is all over the place. Look at your mind. That is a part of ultimate Bodhicitta training or discipline. Our mind fluctuates constantly, back and forth, forth and back. Look at that, just LOOK AT THAT!
..
If you look further and further, at your mind’s root, its base, you will find that it has no color and no shape. Your mind is, basically speaking, somewhat blank. There is nothing to it…This blankness is connected to mindfulness. To begin with, you are mindful of some THING; you are mindful of yourself,, you are mindful of your atmosphere, and you are mindful of your breath. But if you look at WHY you are mindful, beyond WHAT you are mindful of, you begin to find that there is no root. Everything begins to dissolve. That is the idea of examining the nature of unborn awareness.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Daily Reminders; Regard All Dharmas as Dreams

Another thing about these email reminders is that they are in the order that they are found in the book that they are taken from, just so you know.                   Available from . . . http://lojongmindtraining.com/

Regard All Dharmas as Dreams

You can experience that dreamlike quality by relating with sitting meditation practice. When you are reflecting on the breath, suddenly discursive thoughts begin to arise; you begin to see things, to hear things, and to feel things. But all those perceptions are none other than your own mental creation. In the same way, you can see that your hate for your enemy, your love for your friends, and your attitude toward money, food, and wealth are all part of discursive thought.

Regarding things as dreams does not mean that you have become fuzzy or woolly, that everything has an edge of sleepiness to it. You might actually have a good dream, vivid and graphic… For instance, if you have participated in group meditation practice, your memory of your meditation cushion and the person who sat in front of you is very vivid, as is your memory of your food and the sound of the gong and the bed you slept in. But none of those situations is regarded as completely invincible and solid and tough. Everything is shifty.

Things have a dreamlike quality. But at the same time, the production of your mind is quite vivid… what you perceive is a product of your mind, using your sense organs as channels for the sense perception.

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

Daily email Reminders

I am posting these daily email reminders from the Tonglen and Mind Training Site http://lojongmindtraining.com/ as a possible jump off point for writing. If they inspire some writing, I will post it in the comments. You are welcome to post too of course.

The Lojong Reminders;

First, Train in the Preliminaries

In practicing the slogans and in your daily life, you should maintain an awareness of

[1] the preciousness of human life and the particular good fortune of life in an environment in which you can hear the teachings of Buddhadharma;

[2] the reality of death, that it comes suddenly and without warning;

[3] the entrapment of Karma – whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, only further entraps you in the chain of cause and effect; and

[4] the intensity and inevitability of suffering for you and for all sentient beings.

This is called “taking the attitude of the four reminders”

From Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa , copyright 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
(Official Chogyam Trungpa Website)
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

a virus from outer space

a la: http://www.acjournal.org/holdings/vol6/iss3/responses/attias/virus.html

“Language,” William S. Burroughs reminded us, “is a virus from outer space.” Performance artist Laurie Anderson adds, “That’s why I’d rather hear your name than see your face.” This metaphor captures beautifully both the power and the danger presented by the task of communicating the “flux of wholeness,” as Heather Raikes describes the rheomode. Raikes’ use of the rheomode suggests that technology might be seen not just as a channel for communication and performance, but more radically as the environment in which subjects serve as conduits for experience.

A virus operates autonomously, without human intervention. It attaches itself to a host and feeds off of it, growing and spreading from host to host. Language infects us; its power derives not from its straightforward ability to communicate or persuade but rather from this infectious nature, this power of bits of language to graft itself onto other bits of language, spreading and reproducing, using human beings as hosts.The notion of the meme — coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins to illustrate the field of memetics — crystallizes this view of the communication process. Georges Bataille similarly argued that communication was best understood from the perspective of contagion. In Bataille any human being is no more than a conduit for communicative process, a channel for ideas which pass through him/her.”If, as it appears to me, a book is communication, then the author is only a link among many readings.”* The author is simply a node on a network, through which ideas pass.

At stake in such a conception is a radical reworking of the notion of the subject in communicative experience. Bataille writes:

a man is only a particle inserted in unstable and entangled wholes. These wholes are composed in personal life in the form of multiple possibilities, starting with a knowledge that is crossed like a threshold – and the existence of the particle can in no way be isolated from this composition…. This extreme instability of connections alone permits one to introduce, as a puerile but convenient illusion, a representation of isolated existence turning in on itself. (“The Labyrinth,” 174).

Subjectivity is an illusion, one that allows us to operate comfortably in this plane of existence, but which nonetheless masks true reality, in which there is no division between subject and object: “There is no longer subject-object, but a ‘yawning gap‘ between the one and the other and, in the gap, the subject, the object are dissolved; there is passage, communication, but not from one to the other: the one and the other have lost their separate existence” (“The Torment,” 89).